Assessing the case for theism › Morality and experience: what exactly needs explaining?

Mackie's moral discussion requires particular care. He does not defend objective, intrinsically prescriptive moral values and then try to preserve them without God. In chapter 6(e), he conditionally grants that values of that unusual kind, if they existed, could give inductive support to a divine explanation. He then disputes the premise that we have such values to explain. This is different from denying that people care about cruelty, make moral judgments, or cooperate.

He also distinguishes creating obligation by command from creating objective value. A command cannot be the ultimate source of every obligation if obeying it already presupposes an obligation to obey its issuer. His conditional concession about value therefore does not simply revive a divine-command theory. Chapter 6(e), pp. 114–118.

Imagine a manager trying to justify a rule. “Because I ordered it” identifies an authority's decision. It leaves open why that authority should be obeyed, what limits it has, and whether the rule is good. This contemporary example does not settle the theology. It helps separate a command's existence from its justification, which is the distinction the argument needs.

Chapter 10 similarly separates religious experiences from the conclusions drawn from them. Someone can undergo a vivid experience while misidentifying its source. Recognizing the experience's reality for the person does not establish that a divine being caused it. Conversely, proposing a psychological explanation does not establish that every religious interpretation is false. The dispute concerns the evidence for moving from a reported state of consciousness to an external supernatural reality.

Mackie's natural histories of religion serve a related but limited purpose. A belief's natural origin does not logically entail its falsity. An account of why people would hold a belief even without its truth can, however, weaken an appeal to its popularity. That distinction protects the discussion from an easy genetic fallacy: dismissing a claim solely because of how someone acquired it. Introduction, p. 7; chapter 10.